


The Definition of Normal

by whitesilverandmercury



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin
Genre: Lacrosse, M/M, Mental Illness, and benzo-depakote cocktails, and the drama club, mild homophobic terms in the form of realistic portrayal of society, past trauma doing the dance of major plot, prozac - Freeform, references to the AIDS scare of the late 90s/early 2000s, situational depression, the wretched overused early 2000s, the wretched overused high school au, thinking about thinking about suicide, use and abuse of some cliches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-02-15 12:17:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2228721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitesilverandmercury/pseuds/whitesilverandmercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t normal to jack off thinking about the boy you wish was still around, the one canonized forever as St. Freckles of the Wrongfully Accused. It wasn’t normal to so intimately know the difference between mood stabilizers and SSRIs. It wasn’t normal to kill a man on your own before you were sixteen, or to want to kiss the boy you’d wanted to punch last week. But since Eren Jäger came roaring through Jean’s world like a perfect storm, normal was turning out to be just a matter of perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Folie à Deux

**Author's Note:**

> hi again guys 8) i really wanted to wait until this was done to start putting it up, but i just can't wait any longer. hope you enjoy this one as much as any others and thanks again for being awesome
> 
> i may or may not post a song list that goes with this fic, gonna try to collect them all as i go along - the inspiration one sand the mentioned ones. if i don't name anything and you want to know what song i've mentioned or referred to or whatever, just let me know! 
> 
> starting with a double update to make up for the awful fact that this is a high school au.

**i. {greys, california; november 2002}**

“Hello?”

“Hey, oh man, I’m so glad I caught you—I was worried about the time change—listen, I had a dream about you… We were in this house and a crook broke in and we hid upstairs but he found us and I watched him kill you. Look, I know what you’re going to say. ‘It was just a dream.’ But it was one of those old nightmares like I used to have, and I _know_ it’s just a dream but… It was horrible. Like, I just—I needed to tell you how much you mean to me, okay? Blood brothers, right? I just needed to make sure you know how awesome you are, how smart and handsome and amazing. Don’t laugh at me. I just worry you don’t know it. Listen, I don’t know where I’d be without you. You’re right, by the way. You said, ‘You can’t be something you’re not.’ I’m tired, man. I’m tired of trying to be something I’m not. We all create our own hell. _I_ made that one up. It’s good, right? I just want to be normal. Hey, I can’t wait to see you. I know we just saw each other like a month ago, but still, that doesn’t count. This is for real.”

Jean removed the telephone receiver from where he’d wedged it between ear and shoulder and stared at it long and hard like maybe it might explain what the fuck was going on.

It did not. It was a telephone receiver. But if it could boa constrictor him in its death trap of a cord despite him standing in one spot the entire time, surely it was capable of spewing riddles at him in a voice he did not recognize.

Perplexed, Jean held the phone back up to his face. “Are you a telemarketer?” he grunted. His next guess was one of those doomed long-distance relationship suckers.

“What? No. Wait—”

“Yeah, that was really heartfelt and all, but I think you have the wrong number, pal.”

“…Hmm, awkward.”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, did it mean something to you?”

This was the third time Jean had returned the phone to his ear. Why didn’t he just hang up already? God, he was pathetic. God, he was desperate if he was carrying on a conversation with a wrong-number call. “Uh… Sure?”

“Cool. Bye.”

 _Click_.

Jean threw the phone back on the cradle and carefully untangled himself from the winding cord. Fucking weird. Okay, maybe he wasn’t the pathetic one. That wrong-number caller had sounded too young and chatty for telemarketing, and practically _starved_ for human connection.

Jean stood in the middle of the kitchen and stared at the phone, lip curled. Imagine if his mom wasn’t out at the store right now. Imagine if she’d answered. Imagine if Sasha wasn’t at Conny’s soccer practice. Imagine if _she’d_ answered.

He climbed over the back of the couch the way his mom always yelled at him not to and clawed for the remote to turn up the television, now that that interruption was dealt with. Alas, what his afternoons had become: _Days of Our Lives_ , apple juice in a box, answering wrong-number phone calls and wearing mismatched socks. Okay, but that Jensen Ackles guy was good. Nominated good. He had soap star eyelashes. Probably wouldn’t get anywhere else with those soap star eyelashes. Maybe porn, but certainly not primetime or anything.

 _We all create our own hell_.

* * *

 

Greys, California, was nothing at all what Eren remembered it to be. Then again, he hadn’t been in Greys longer than a holiday or two for the last seven years, and every time Greys felt different than the last.

The one thing that never changed was—the school bus, the pines and almost-redwoods rushing by like smudges of watercolor, the call of crows and seabirds, the ringing silence, the swarm of police cars at the side of Highway 20, yellow crime scene tape. Flash bulbs of the press. Flash bulb memories.

The Ativan helped with those. Or maybe it was the Depakote. He didn’t know.

Eren had gone with his father to see Stonehenge, Bath, Oxford University a few years ago, and they’d stopped in an English village called Clovelly, all smooth stone and white houses with dark roofs and gravel sloping into the water for the boats. Greys was like that in some places. In other places, it was shiny vacation houses, gated communities, apartment complexes, chain restaurants and a recently renovated shopping mall and the only real hospital in the surrounding three counties—with a pediatrics wing, an airlift pad, and everything. Greys had gone from cute Californian harbor town to a bustling vacation and tourism hotspot, with a brand new three-lane main street (not to be confused with the historical Main Street that wound through the “old downtown”) dividing the upper crest from the blue collar. There didn’t seem much in between. There had never really been much in between.

His Aunt and Uncle Reiss lived in the older part of town, where the paint was usually peeling off houses. Chain-link and picket fence intermingled, and backyards sloped loose and grainy from thin reedy grass to the waterfront, which wasn’t really sandy so much as ocean-polished stone and gritty soil, water washing shells and mussels out of tide pools while in the distance rich people’s seaplanes bobbed on the water.

There were wind chimes in their front yard, and a statue or two of jewel-eyed garden fairies. The sunroom was a room of glass walls and hanging ferns clustered like a forest, and Eren sat cross-legged on the seventies-dark carpet, squinting through a shelf of geodes, out the window-walls, watching the way the brumal sky rolled and shivered over the water of the Pacific, talking to his father on the chunky cordless.

“Yeah, Dad, the trip was fine. Yeah, I’m exhausted. It’s dinnertime over there, right? It’s only nine in the morning here…”

“Be good, Eren. I wish I could have flown in with you, help you settle in… You’ll be all right with Uncle Lod taking you to your appointments, right? I can come for Christmas—”

“I’m settling fine, Dad. Guess what? I can get on the roof from my bedroom window. Tori’s gonna help me decorate my room. Right, Tori?”

His cousin Historia nodded. She mimed from the sunroom couch that she said Hello to her Uncle Grisha, curled up with a sketchbook and pastels.

“ _Eren_ —” His father said it so urgently, it was almost laughable. But maybe only because Eren knew what was coming. “Say hi to your Uncle Hannes for me. Be good. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Daddy.”

Historia helped him unpack, hanging clothes that he simply threw to the closet floor. She put away the books he stacked under the window. She fetched the thumbtacks and tape as he stood in the center of the room and thought long and hard on which poster went where on the gray-blue bedroom walls—not to mention his calendar, his photograph collection, his class schedule for school.

“Thank God,” Uncle Lod bemoaned, kindly of course, masking his relief with a grumpy eye roll for good measure lest Eren notice just how everyone still walked on eggshells around him. “If we didn’t get you busy with something soon, you’d drive us all crazy. I’ve never known anyone to be so damn excited to start school.”

Eren flashed him a grin from the living room floor, where he and Historia were comparing classes. Little pink slip of paper she’d brought home for him, pencil-marked and smudged. Class schedule in the States felt so much more rushed and slapdash than it had in prestigious European boarding schools. But prestigious European boarding schools had also found Eren too rushed and slapdash for their classes, so Eren had compromised with expulsion notices.

“When do you start again?” Aunt Reiss added from the French doors to the kitchen, raising her brows. “You’re sure you don’t want to wait until second semester begins? The guidance counselor said maybe you should wait, your credits are fine. It’s only a month or two away and…”

There was a knock at the screen door where the front door hung open. Uncle Lod stayed sprawled in his easy chair; Aunt Reiss peeked around the French doors. Historia sprang up to greet the call.

“Is it Hannes?” Eren asked, swinging crossed ankles in the air where he laid on his belly on the living room carpet, struggling to decide whether a red notebook or a black notebook better suited Trig and Stats class. He was too tired to be hungry anymore, but Hannes was going to take him to Holly’s-on-the-Harbor for lunch, and Eren hadn’t been to Holly’s-on-the-Harbor since 1999 when—

The rattle of the screen door and awkward shuffling in the foyer didn’t seem right for Uncle Hannes, or even Armin, a visit from whom Eren was also impatiently awaiting.

“It’s the laundry, Mom,” Historia peeped, guiding the visitor in through the living room towards the kitchen.

On the television behind Eren, the audience of _Family Feud_ laughed and laughed at something.

“Oh yeah,” Uncle Lod grunted, “forgot to tell you. Our washing machine bit the dust last week.”

“Ohhh!” Aunt Reiss waved Historia and the laundry delivery into the kitchen. “Hey, Jean, come in here, I have some tea for your mom to thank her…”

“Char’s friend Esmé has been doing our laundry for us since the Laundromat’s a pain in the ass,” Uncle Lod continued to narrate in a muffled, mumbled way.

“Yeah, got it,” Eren said, watching Historia lead Esmé’s son Jean in with a basket of folded laundry.

He was tall—tall enough, anyway, tall like puberty had been kind to him, which it clearly had been, judging by the smooth shape of his jaw and the brooding look to his brow. He was obviously not much older than Historia, maybe went to school with her, seeing as they were offhandedly chatting like they knew each other at least a little. Lovely soft sweep of ash blond hair, descending dark into what had probably a while ago been a fade. He was in a sleeveless hoodie, faded jeans, wallet chain on his hip. He carried himself that like Landon Walker guy from _A Walk to Remember_ —pissed off with the world at large, a cocky punk ass, the kind of bad boy nobody wanted their daughters to be friends with but there he was talking with Historia about papers that had been due after Thanksgiving break.

“Hey,” Eren interrupted from the living room floor, leaning on one arm to be seen through the lowest panel of the French door. “You play baseball?”

Everyone looked to him; his aunt, his uncle, his cousin, this son of Esmé. Esmé’s son cocked a brow. It was sort of snotty and uninterested. He said, “Not for the team, no. Why?”

“You look like you play baseball,” Eren replied. He gestured a little. “You know, the arms. The butt.”

There was a minor silence, cutely awkward. Eren noted Esmé’s son Jean’s eyes were bright, crystal-clear blue. Almost gray, actually, almost colorless. He looked tense, incredibly suspicious, like an animal caught in headlights. Finally he turned back to Historia and Aunt Reiss, completely ignoring the kudos. Eren was a little offended.

“Don’t be a dick,” Uncle Lod muttered, nudging Eren’s shoulder with a socked foot.

“I’m not,” Eren mouthed back. He really wasn’t. Some people clearly just did not know how to take compliments.

“Don’t mind Eren,” he heard Aunt Reiss saying in the low hum of gossip, “he’s my brother’s boy. He’s finishing out high school here. Apparently he’s been giving his dad a little bit of trouble lately. You boys grow out of that stage fast, don’t you?”

“Of course, Char.”

“Hey, this bamboo is for your mom, too. It’s that fungus sway stuff.”

“Feng shui?”

“Did you want something to drink, honey?”

“No, thanks, Char.”

Esmé’s son took the box of Red Rose tea and a tiny windowsill bamboo Aunt Reiss gave him and headed out. Uncle Hannes quickly replaced him, pickup truck rumbling up by the mailbox.

“Hannes! Hannes!” Eren scrambled up to leap for him at the door, both laughing and stumbling around the foyer until Aunt Reiss threatened to hurt them if they broke anything like the curio cabinet by the coat rack.

“Ready for Holly’s?” Uncle Hannes cried. “You know, they tried to put in a Hooter’s last year. All of Greys thought it was a joke. Down at the bar we said, ‘Why the fuck do we need a Hooter’s, we have Holly’s!’ Hey, Eren, are you legal yet? We should go to the bar. I’ll bet you need a beer.”

Eren laughed, clinging to Hannes’s side as Hannes ruffled his hair hard enough to hurt. Hannes knew he wasn’t legal. It was a joke. Hannes was the fun uncle. Hannes had eyes that always reminded Eren of his mom’s eyes. Hannes was his mom’s baby brother, after all, and it was Hannes who had been there at her funeral holding Eren on his hip while the flowers filled the casket and the eerie classical music had echoed around the wake, Hannes who’d been the first to rip through the police tape screaming, “Eren! Eren! Where’s—”

Flash bulb memories. They went away easily. Eren liked that Hannes listened to things like Elliott Smith in his rusty pickup, humming and drumming along as they headed to Holly’s-on-the-Harbor for lunch and the November winds stirred up the skies and the sea and the lush dark green trees like nowhere else in the world.

_Drink up, baby, stay up all night with the things you could do, you won’t, but you might…_

Greys was different, but the same, and somehow it had never felt more _normal_.

* * *

 

High school was high school, no matter where or when. Anyone who’d ever been to high school knew what it was like and if anyone said high school wasn’t the same for everyone, they were lying through their teeth.

Monroe High, whose namesake was indeed a shout-out to the historical expansion of America from Atlantic to Pacific, was a moderately large campus for a place the size of Greys, all old world brick and masonry on the outside and on the inside graffitied desks, multipaned windows, squawking lockers, cluttered bulletin boards, doorless stalls in the lavatories near the allegedly haunted auditorium.

Before class on Monday, Armin gave him the run-down on cliques and teams and class standings. They sat in the cafeteria, waiting for the first bell to ring like the rest of the student body as a whole—milling, loitering, buzzing like flies to the carcass of the American education system. Historia was with her sophomore girlfriends. The autumn rain ran down the broad textured windows, casting a soft gray light from the overcast day on faded tile and growling vending machines.

“This building used to be the asylum,” Armin divulged with a conspiratorial smirk and a sinister glance, like the way he used to tell stories about the plague or the French Revolution or Ouija Board parties, waving a flashlight below his face in the dark as Eren craned in, white-knuckling his blankets.  

“A hospital,” Annie corrected, sitting with one leg crossed over the other and an idle hand twisting through her boyfriend’s hair.

“Which means it was also the asylum,” Armin reiterated in an ominous way, far from derailed. “The freshman wing used to be the morgue. Over by the PAC was the experimental lobotomy wing, but it was demolished for the auditorium to be built. I’ve heard that in the basement, if you’re walking alone, you can hear wheelchairs and gurneys rolling around, and once a piece of chalk flew off the board in Mr. Shadis’s room—”

“Has he told you he wants to be a ghost hunter?” Annie interrupted, raising her brows at Eren as if to say, _Thank God you’re back because I can’t deal with this._ Eren liked Annie. He didn’t know her that well yet, but he’d heard plenty of good things. Plus she was funny.

“No, I don’t,” Armin argued, looking mildly insulted. “I want to be one of the experts they call for History Channel documentaries.”

Getting back to business, Armin said: “Really, Eren, high school over here is all common sense and bad movie clichés.”

Armin said: “Remember, if you don’t own a pair of galoshes or a cable knit sweater, you’re not a real Greys kid. See, look, that’s Thomas Wagner—he’s a fisherman’s son. Look at his boots and his sweater. No one wears hoodies except tourists and visitors.”

Armin said: “We’re allowed to sign out for lunch only if we have an off-campus permit.”

Armin said: “Nobody plays football here. We play lacrosse, and lacrosse jocks are generally nicer than football jocks. Or so I’ve heard from the transfer students.”

Armin also said: “Annie is the only cheerleader who can kick a guy’s ass without even messing up her hair. Ask Bert and Reiner.”

Annie smiled for a split-second—a bashful little smirk—and then she leaned over to plant a kiss on Armin’s cheek that made Armin blush a soft pink, stare unwavering from Eren’s, brows slowly climbing up under his messy blond half-back as if to say, _Can you believe she digs me?_

Eren shot him a teasing look in return, secret code of blood brothers. God, he was still sort of in awe that he was actually here; he was actually at Monroe High with Armin, back in Greys. He was just a normal guy at a normal school, and Armin was right on the money when he said American high school was common sense and bad clichés. It was a little bit of culture shock after Paris, and Berlin and London and the Institut auf dem Rosenberg in St. Gall. Everything felt so casual, so drab, so uncontrolled and unfocused. Then again, maybe the only difference was the lack of uniforms.

“Hey, who’s _that_?” Eren asked, gesturing to the wide stairwell up into the cafeteria from the main hall down below.

Armin leaned to see. “Who?”

“ _Him_. He came over to my aunt and uncle’s the other day…”

“Which one?”

“The one everyone’s parting like the Red Sea for.”

“Oh—Jean—”

 _Jean_ , that’s right. Esmé’s son, _Jean_ of the laundry basket, Jean of the grown-out fade, Jean of the clean Henley and blue-gray flannel, well-worn denim jacket and scuffed Keds. Not quite grunge trash, not quite punk horror. And it was the most interesting cliché of all as everyone and anyone noticing him in close proximity moved quickly away like whatever had crawled up his ass and died was the latest trendiest contagion. Whispers trailed; if not whispers, contemptuous glances. Like he was bubble-wrapped in some invisible force field, everyone’s avoidance of Esmé’s son was disgustingly natural, weirdly fluid, like it was premeditated or very widely practiced.

“What is he, the resident bad boy or something?” Eren prompted.

Annie laughed, a harsh ringing sound which she quickly tried to make up for by covering her mouth and evading Armin’s angry glance.  

“No…” Armin said, brow knotting, and his breath hung on his lower lip so Eren waited for him to say more but realized there was nothing coming. Nothing coming except for Esmé’s son Jean himself, apparently, and the moment Annie confirmed he was approaching, she combed her fingers through Armin’s hair, kissed his cheek again, and was off to find the rest of her cheerleading gang before the first bell.

“Hey,” Esmé’s son Jean greeted, giving Armin a gentle elbow to the shoulder—which Armin returned, and with a pinch in the gut Eren realized he and Jean were _friends_. “’Sup, blondie?” Jean’s gaze slid warily to appraise Eren. Eren was gawking. After an uncomfortable moment or two, like Jean had no idea why Eren was even acknowledging him at all, he at least finally addressed him.

“You’re Historia’s cousin, right?”

Eren shrugged and nodded at the same time, casting Jean a sideways look. The noise in the cafeteria made his ears ring; it detached him from the moment, eyes roaming Jean head to toe again. Esmé’s son Jean was sort of a passive grump but he was also the cutest passive grump Eren had met in probably ever and Eren grinned to himself, guiltily.

“He transferred from abroad,” Armin explained, trying to ease the awkward tension.

Oh, right, they were still in the middle of a heated introduction scene—

“You’re a foreign exchange student?” Jean’s nose wrinkled. “You don’t have an accent. I mean, do you?”

“ _Nein, Arschloch_.”

Jean scowled. Eren raised his brows in challenge. Armin heaved a sigh into the back of his hand then looked between them with an impressive grin. “Hey, look, I knew you guys would like each other.”

Giving Jean another secret once-over, Eren shrugged, clearing his throat. He assumed the role of bigger person, leaning into one hand and looking up at Esmé’s son Jean. “Sorry. No, I’m not technically an exchange. I grew up in Greys, but my dad accepted a position in Switzerland so we moved there when I was, like, ten. After that it was London for two years, Berlin, Paris. But now I’m back.”

Jean squinted at him in the strangest way, like he was trying to follow Eren’s words. Was he stupid? Okay, now that he’d mentioned an accent, Eren felt like maybe he had a very, very, _very_ slight one, just on certain words and inflections. He blushed, a little self-conscious. Jean’s eyes were burning holes into him and it was starting to piss him off. Hey, he didn’t want to, but if Jean was looking to pick a fight, Eren was not averse to placing a new personal record for time taken to find himself in the dean’s office—er, principal’s office—

But: “Holy shit, I _know you_ ,” Jean sputtered, looking far more afraid suddenly than he did agitated.

Armin looked between them again, scowling quizzically.

“No, you don’t,” Eren said. “I mean, your mom did my aunt’s laundry, but—”

“No—” Really, a look so soft and vulnerable didn’t very well match Jean’s grungy Landon Walker style. “No, I mean, your voice—” His face hardened suddenly, like he was suspicious, or at least putting back up his very obvious guard. “Did you wrong-number call anyone lately?”

Eren thought about it, even though it was the dumbest most strangely specific question he’d heard in a long time. Except he _had_. He’d meant to call Armin on the way to the Charles de Gaulle, but he’d punched a 9 instead of a 7 in the exchange and he’d gushed to a complete stranger and felt like an utter dunce, _Are you a telemarketer?_ and—

—and apparently that complete stranger had been none other than Esmé’s son Jean.

Eren threw his head back and cackled.

Armin put two and two together; Eren had told him all about the mistaken call earlier. Jean looked moderately sick to his stomach, and somewhat perturbed by Eren’s unconcealed glee.

“What a plot twist!” Eren snorted. “Small fucking world, huh? Nice to meet you, Jean. I’m Eren.”

Eren stuck his hand out to be shaken and waited.

Eren smiled his friendliest smile.

Eren really didn’t think his friend-making skills were _that_ bad but maybe they were because once again, Jean completely ignored him.

Jean just sort of stared, then turned to Armin, asked if he still wanted to hang out later, cast one last glance at Eren like Eren was a madman, then muttered under the violent ringing of the first bell, “See you guys at lunch…” and took off for his locker.

“That guy needs work with his social skills,” Eren declared.

Armin stopped, shooting him a pointed look. He didn’t even have to say it; Eren knew. He tasted the irony. He was just about as socially disastrous as they came, after all.

* * *

 

“Hey, Sid Vicious!”

Jean slammed his locker shut and knew exactly what he’d find, unfortunately: this Eren guy, elbowing and shouldering his way through the backpacks and friend circles like blood clots in the flow of hallway traffic.

“I’m not Sid Vicious,” Jean parried below his breath and through his teeth. “Please don’t call me that.”

“Armin gave me your locker number.”

Jean contemplated asking why. He figured that was opening up too much space for continued chitchat. Instead he edged out a dispassionate, “…Okay.”

Eren shrugged limply, like he wasn’t sure why Jean wasn’t picking up on the conversational cues. “So, do you want to be friends?” he volunteered.

Jean snorted. The snort became a disbelieving grin, a cocked brow. After a moment he realized there was no punch-line. Eren was utterly serious. Jean popped the little lock back on his locker and reached down to slide his textbooks into his bag. “I’m not interested in making friends,” he replied curtly. And it was the truth, really. Because not many people were interested in being his friend, so why bother? He had Armin, at least. And he had Sasha, and he had Mikasa when Mikasa talked to him. Same with Berthold. A tight nuclear core was more appealing to him than _friends_.

“Why?”

Jean cut Eren a dirty look without lifting his head, lip curling. “…Because I’m not.”

Because he was freaking out, that was why. He was shaken. Because it was beyond uncomfortably weird to him that he was talking face-to-face with the very person who had wrong-number called him a weekend ago. Because that had been a private thing, and this made it all too real. Because his palms were clammy and his heart was in his throat, and he had not the slightest interest in becoming _friends_ with the guy who had accidentally wrong-number called him because that…that was just not okay.

_I needed to tell you how much you mean to me, okay?_

_I just needed to make sure you know how awesome you are._

_I just worry you don’t know it._

_You can’t be something you’re not._

_We all create our own hell._

_I just want to be normal._

_Well… Did it mean something to you?_

Yes. Yes, it had meant something to Jean and that was what felt so pathetic and embarrassing. Eren had no idea what that call had done to him. Jean’s sympathetic nervous system was screaming red alert—though it felt more like he was short-circuiting because the Prozac liked to fire blanket everything that felt urgent.

“Becaaause…” Eren echoed, raising his brows. “…you think no one’s interested in being your friend?”

Jean scoffed coldly. He surveyed the hall quickly, critically, trying to gauge if maybe he could just jump into the flow of morning bodies and lose this creep. He made the mistake of looking a few stoners at the water fountains in the eye; they looked away quickly and dissolved into gossip, hunched shoulders. There was no escape, really. Jean wasn’t that lucky. He was going to be late to class, too.

“No,” he sighed, looking back to Eren and hoping Eren was smart enough to read the utter annoyance on his face. “Because I really just want to get the fuck out of high school and move on with life. Why the _fuck_ do you want to be my friend, anyway?”

Eren shrugged. He was either extremely persistent, or wholly oblivious to social cues. Jean wasn’t sure which was worse. “Armin’s my best friend. Why shouldn’t I be your friend, too? We could be three amigos or something. Hey, how else do you make friends in a new place without _trying_?”

Jean deadpanned, eyes scanning Eren’s face. The guy was serious, he realized. He was gravely serious, and his disregard for boundaries was both bothering and fascinating Jean. It was like a science experiment. He was likeable and he was genuine, and that was the terrifying part. Jean wasn’t prepared for it. “You’re fucking _joking_ , right?” he muttered. The crowd in the halls was beginning to thin out; the tardy bell would any second and it might as well have been the fire alarm because snooping glances were burning into him in passing. “People are staring,” Jean added, in the same low tense way, but it was much less unyielding. It was sort of an apology.

Eren was not so clueless as to look around. He leaned against a locker two doors down and fixed Jean with a bold, dark look. It was Double-Double-Dare personified. “Because I’m new, or because I’m talking to you?” he cut swiftly, clearly more insightful than he let on at first.

Jean shrugged. “Me.”

“Hmm,” Eren hummed, watching as Jean hoisted his backpack to his shoulder. The tardy bell rang. His voice was too loud, too crisp in the falling silence, bouncing off metal and tile. “I guess I need to up my ante. I like to have my own reputation, not one by association.”

Jean gave up in fighting Eren’s banter. At least his heart wasn’t racing anymore; now he just felt slightly on edge, and that was fine. That was normal. He gave up trying to establish any reputation of his own. Eren was knocking it down like a bully stomping on sandcastles every time he raised it in rebuttal, deconstructing it like he knew Jean or something. Well, he didn’t. And Jean wanted to keep it that way. He did not want to get to know someone likeable and genuine like Eren; it would save him the trouble of disappointing Eren with how uncool he actually was.

But he also felt obligated to lend some wise words. “Eren,” Jean sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. That was his name, right? Eren. When he opened his eyes again, Eren this alleged nut-job best friend of Armin hailing from pretentious schools abroad was looking at him in the most open and vulnerable way, and it sort of winded Jean for a beat or two. He wasn’t used to people looking at him that way; he wasn’t used to someone he’d quite literally just met waiting with genuine trust.

“You don’t want to be friends with me,” Jean finally went on, voice low and somewhat apologetic. “People will think things. People will start shit. Look, buddy, you were in school in Europe. People are gonna think you’re all mysterious and cool and super cultured and shit. You’ve got a free pass to the top and a painless ride through the rest of school. Being friends with me will fuck that right up.”

Eren stared at him, injured. The short hush between them was painfully awkward. And then Eren drew a breath and casually countered, “Clashing with your foreshadowing there, I don’t care what people think of me. Ta-da.”

He waved his hands sarcastically. He cast Jean one last lingering look—Double-Double- _Triple_ -Dare this time—and brushed past him, strutting off through the quiet hall. A teacher’s droning voice echoed from an open door near the water fountains. Jean stared at the tile, brow knotting.

“I don’t know where I’m going,” Eren chirped from the corner, waiting patiently for Jean to help him.

Jean sighed through his teeth, raking a hand through his hair. “What’s your class? I can help you.”

“Ah… Room 372.”

Jean turned around against the lockers with a groan. Of fucking course—Room 372, Mr. Fritz’s World History. The exact class to which Jean was on his way, hoping to slip in unnoticed through the shadows of Mr. Fritz’s videos (they were on the rise of Peter the Great as this semester drew to a close) and slink to the back where his seat waited for him, never taken, practically reserved—

The droning teacher poked his head out of his classroom and snapped, “Are you two going to get class now, or should I close my door so I don’t interrupt your conversation?”

“Sorry, he’s lost,” Jean grumbled bitterly, waving a hand and snatching Eren by the backpack. “Follow me. I have Fritz, too.”

“Hmm…” Eren hummed thoughtfully, shaking free of Jean’s grip.

“People will think funny things when we come in late together, you know.”

“Why? You know, in Paris and London people _think things_ , too, but you’re making me a little nervous about the rumor mill here—”

“I don’t care about Paris and London, Eren.”

“What are _they_ going to think, Jean, that we were smoking pot or huffing whip-its in the bathroom?”

Jean stopped short a few yards from Mr. Fritz’s room, casting Eren a disdainful glance over his shoulder. It was almost a smirk. No, he wanted to say. No, that we were doing something worse together. “…Right,” was all Jean actually said.

“Oh, hey—”

“ _What_?” Jean spat.

“Thanks for doing my aunt’s laundry.”

Jean rolled his eyes and opened the door to Room 372. “Whatever. Also, we’re not friends.”

“Cool, I’ll sit by you,” Eren whispered, ducking into the shadows of Mr. Fritz’s history class and strutting right up to the teacher with his class schedule and transfer student papers out.

Jean tried very hard to disappear into the darkness of the back left corner of the room.

“‘ _In just thirty-six short years, Peter the Great accomplished what took the rest of Western Europe entire centuries: a complete and utter renaissance_ …’”

* * *

 

“How does the Prozac feel?”

Outside the wide windows of the office, Harborside Medical sprawled in a cluster of buildings interconnected by breezeways and glass bridges. Beyond the brick stack of wings and wards was the water, reflecting the sullen bruise of the rainy season sky. Some birds had made a coarse stick nest recently in the cradle of the H in the letters that spelled Harborside on the main facility.

Jean shrugged, rolling his eyes around to Dr. Smith. “Congrats on your son breaking Monroe’s single-game assists record, by the way.” He left out the part where his son the lacrosse captain still sometimes exchanged lingering eye contact in the halls with Jean like he knew Jean’s pain but would never, ever come to his defense because reputation was a house of cards and all it took was one wrong sigh.

Dr. Smith smiled, nodding absently, folding his arms on his Steno pad, which rested upon one knee. “Thank you. How’s the Prozac?” he repeated.

“I don’t know yet.”

“All right. How was your week? It’s really getting cold out, huh?”

Jean looked Dr. Smith up and down, eyes moving over his patterned sweater, his pressed slacks and shining loafers. Man, Erwin the gorgeous popular lacrosse captain was fucked if he inherited Daddy’s receding hairline. Jean sighed. He hated this part of the sessions. Nothing happened worth noting, pretty much ever. Nothing for almost a year now.

“I don’t know,” he whispered.

Dr. Smith nodded sympathetically. He said, “Want to play Thought Roulette?”

“Sure.”

Jean tipped his head back and closed his eyes, already slouched comfortably on the chair opposite Dr. Smith. He sighed, breathed deep, sighed again. Thought Roulette only worked if he cleared his mind.

“Okay, just like always,” Dr. Smith murmured, in that soft articulate therapist way of his, “when a thought pops in your head, speak it aloud. Don’t force anything, just…let the thoughts come on their own.”

It was maybe a little bit like free association, or mindful meditation, or some other Freudian bullshit playing with the dynamic unconscious. It wasn’t hard not to force thinking. It was kind of peaceful and relaxing. That was the best and worst part about the Prozac.

“I jacked off thinking about him the other night,” Jean announced when the thought popped up, not entirely without an ounce of shock value pride.

“Who?”

“Marco.” Jean hummed a little, trying to stimulate the brain juices. “My sister Sasha’s trying to be Kat from ’10 Things I Hate About You’ but she looks more like Pink in ‘Get The Party Started.’ Don’t even ask me about her hip hop motherfucker boyfriend. Okay, I’m just being rude. Conny’s fine. He’s a sophomore. He’s finding himself. He’ll learn.”

“What do you mean, he’ll learn?”

“We all learn.”

Dr. Smith was quiet, writing something. The scratch of his pen on paper was like rain on the window, the tick of the clock. Jean’s voice was thick in his throat as he confessed, “I’ve been thinking about thinking about it again, Dr. Smith.”

Dr. Smith fell still. Jean could feel him picking him apart with his astute therapist eyes. “About what, Jean?”

“I space cased the other day. I was thinking about the way everyone looked at me when…”

“Space cased?”

“Yeah, just zoned. Checked out. No one upstairs. The Prozac does that. I was thinking about thinking about it again. Suicide.”

Jean felt Dr. Smith snap to attention at that word like static electricity charging the air. Jean laughed. He couldn’t help it. It was funny, how that one single word could change everything.

“What about it, Jean?” Dr. Smith pressed, far too gently.

“I don’t think you get what I’m saying. I’m not suicidal. I’m not having suicidal thoughts or tendencies. Not anymore, I mean. Besides, we figured out that was the Elavil. No, I… Well, I mean exactly what I said, Jacob.” Again Jean sensed Dr. Smith’s hypersensitivity, because Jean only addressed him by first name when he didn’t feel uncomfortable anymore. Jean popped his eyes open, frowning apologetically at his therapist. “I was _thinking about_ thinking about it. I didn’t make it to actually _thinking_ about it because Eren accidentally called me.”

“Who’s Eren?”

“A fucking whacko, that’s who.”

“But he stopped you from thinking about it again?”

“I guess. He’s one of Armin’s friends. He misdialed Armin’s number and ended up calling mine. He goes to our school now. I don’t want to be his friend. But at the same time, he’s likeable and genuine and kind of batshit but that’s cool. If he hadn’t accidentally called, if I hadn’t picked up, if I hadn’t stood there listening to the things he said…”

“What did he say?”

“ _Things_ , Jacob. Nice things. He didn’t even mean to say those nice things to me, he thought he was saying them to someone else, but it meant a lot to me. It did something to me. How fucked up, right! I stole someone else’s moment. But just the way he _sounded_ , okay? He _meant_ the things he was saying. I don’t know, it just… Fuck this. I don’t want to be his friend. I can’t be friends with someone who I feel indebted to.”

“Why do you feel indebted to him?”

“Because in a wild convoluted way, he kind of saved my life, I guess.”

Dr. Smith wrote passionately for a moment or two, then threw his Steno pad to his desk and took off his glasses, laced his fingers casually, offered Jean a trustworthy smile.

“Let’s lower your dosage a bit,” he suggested. “Though I’m happy to hear you’ve made a new friend.”

Jean stared at him for a moment, dumbly. He wasn’t quite sure if he cared enough to explain that lowering his dosage sent a little throb of nervousness through his veins, or to remind Dr. Smith that he had no intentions of nor desire to befriend Eren Jäger. Except—fuck—

He _did_.

He really kind of sort of a little bit _did_ want to know Eren Jäger, and he knew fighting it was pointless like a moth being drawn towards a flame.

* * *

 

**_end ch i._ **


	2. Akrasia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The heart-wrenching twenty-three-hour search has finally drawn to a triumphant close. We’re reporting live from the scene just off Highway 20, ninety-five miles south of Greys in Jackson State Forest, where the school bus was spotted by a passing car." Eren stumbles upon the memorial for Marco Bodt. Rumors swirl and high school politics are unavoidable. Didn’t they teach the story of Icarus flying too close to the sun over there in stuck-up private schools? // first of 2 ereri occurrences.

**ii. {fort bragg-willits road, california; october 1995}**

“ _The heart-wrenching twenty-three-hour search has finally drawn to a triumphant close. We’re reporting live from the scene just off Highway 20, ninety-five miles south of Greys in Jackson State Forest, where the school bus was spotted by a passing car. We have here Kenny Rydo, who called the authorities from his cellular phone. Kenny, it’s so dark—you’re traveling alone—what made you pull over in the first place?_ ”

“ _I saw the girl._ ”

“ _You saw the girl? You mean Mikasa Ackerman?_ ”

“ _Yeah. I thought, ‘Why the heck is there a school bus here?’ So I kind of slowed down a little. Then in my headlights I saw the girl in one of the bus windows and I mean, it’s been all over the damn news all day…_ ”

“ _And thank goodness, right? What did you think when you went up and into the bus?_ ”

“ _It looks like a fuck—g horror movie in there. That’s what I thought._ ”

“ _A-ah! Awful. Just awful. You can see all the police tape. Forensic specialists are just arriving. Thanks, Kenny. Over here we have the Ackerman family_ …”

* * *

**{greys, california; december 2002}**

There were three big tourist draws of Greys, California. It had started as a harbor town, a logging and fishing town, but in the last two or so decades, there had been an influx of the artsy and the well-established, coming together into some eclectic clusterfuck of hippies and entrepreneurs, rednecks and retirees, wealthy families looking for quiet small-town simplicity and, of course, the sightseers.

There were the redwood trees and the beautiful Northern California scenery to see, for one. Another big tourist draw was the annual art festival, which drew a lot of art admirers and investors, showcasing local work. Then there was the infamous Holly’s on the Harbor, the rickety old seafood restaurant with the topless lady painted on the peeling blue-gray sideboards, some eighties’ street artist’s way of marking the town. Boaters who came up to the dock could place their orders at Holly’s like it was a drive-in. It had been featured on something or another on the Travel Network, which was completely appropriate because Holly’s had even better hushpuppies than Long John Silver’s.

“What do you want to see first, the real Greys or the fake Greys?” Armin pressed excitedly while Annie was at cheer practice and then her parents’ tae kwon do dojo where she helped teach the preschool class. The sound of the surf crashing against polished stone and cold crunchy sand was swallowed by the seaside wind, which was ripping the clouds across the sky like it was trying to find the winter sun.

“What do you mean?” Eren searched Armin’s face for explanation, but it was Mikasa who threw her red scarf over her shoulder to muffle her mouth, illuminating:

“The real Greys or the fake Greys. Like, you wanna be a lame tourist or do you want to see the town how _we_ know it?”

They reacquainted Eren with Main Street first. Nothing had changed but the crowds and the cement. The timelessness was eerie; walking down the crooked sidewalks was like time travel. Even the same faces waited within Main Street’s pioneer-town facades as they wandered from chocolate shop to Native American outlet to quaint little bookstore that smelled strongly of eucalyptus and saltwater air. Shops selling all sorts of bullshit, with their doors open even when it rained.

They stopped to admire the displays in the windows of the gun shop, the pawn shop, a tattoo place, the gourmet cupcake boutique. When they went into The Dirty Hippie, a new age joint, the owner greeted Mikasa by name. She squinted at Eren like he’d said something but he hadn’t; she chirped, “Your friend’s aura is pretty wild, Mikasa!” and Eren looked up sharply from the statues of dragons with birth stones for eyes, by the crystal healing shelves, feeling a little violated but intrigued all the same.

The streetlights were beginning to pop on. The stars were prying through the scrim of winter clouds. The air had a damp chill bite to it like soggy winters did.

“It’s time for your initiation back into Greys,” Armin conspired in the pools of light from streetlamps, hunched into his marine cardigan.

There was an easy way to sneak into the school bus depot, where any self-respecting teenager went on Friday nights to drink and smoke and hang out under the unused buses, leaning back on the big stinky tires and hoping there was no gasoline left in the bus. But it was a Wednesday night so the depot was essentially theirs to prowl with most their peers preoccupied at Kiwanis, the arcade, the YMCA playing unofficial basketball tourneys. Or cruising down to Sacramento with their fake IDs, looking for a better time than Greys’s play-pretend downtown had to offer.

Just like the sweaters and galoshes, nobody was accepted as a _real_ Greys kid until they partied in the school bus lot, or walked through St. Teddy’s Cemetery at night and spit in the haunted well without being chased out by ghosts.

They played hide-and-go-seek in the light of flashlights for a while, which felt a lot like a zombie apocalypse. They climbed atop a forgotten short bus and together Eren and Armin recited Rimbaud in authentic French, as Jean and Mikasa sat underneath clapping mechanically because they didn’t really care. Mikasa was more into crime noir movies, anyway, and Jean liked Palahniuk above all else.

Greys-Humboldt District Bus 19 sat unassumingly in the bus depot. Eren had hoped to find it faded yellow, broken-out windows, rust-eaten bumpers and soft tires. He’d wanted to see it a dead thing, windshield wipers stuck in mid-swipe forever, a skeleton, a bombed-out building, a bullet casing—damaged and empty, but a Petri dish swarming with left-behind moments in time.

But it wasn’t. It was still in as good repair as a Type C bus could be.

Mikasa had half her face tucked comfortably in her red scarf. Her hair danced and shivered along her ears. Her hands were shoved in the pockets of her Letterman.

Eren’s mouth hung open just a breath, the sag of deep thought as his eyes roamed the old bus. It wasn’t raining anymore, not even tingling that icy winter mist. His hands were limp, warming up in the back pockets of his jeans.

They stood together, looking up at the bus.

“I can’t believe they still use it,” Eren croaked.

“That’s why I bike,” Mikasa explained.

Eren didn’t look at her; he was confident he didn’t have to for her to know what he meant. “Do you remember still?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you talk about it?”

“No.”

“Me, either.”

Mikasa shifted, sighed. Nothing about her equanimity or peakless words betrayed any amount of self-pity or martyrdom, and it was the most amazing and terrifying thing in the world—right then and there, at least. She said, “Everyone’s basically gotten over it. It rocked Greys for a little while, but then it faded away into TV specials and forgotten news stories. Except a year or so ago, this guy came around wanting to mention it in a book he was writing, and my mom told him to get lost and slammed the door in his face.”

Eren laughed. Armin and Jean’s voices bounced off the buses; they were talking like they’d known each other forever. His shoulders tightened. “It’s cold,” he complained.

Mikasa shrugged her Letterman off. “Here,” she said.

Eren wriggled into her Letterman. It smelled sweet, like vanilla, like her perfume maybe, or just her hair and skin. She looked at him without much expectation; she had the eyes of a witness, someone who saw and heard everything but didn’t say so.

Eren shook one arm out, opening the Letterman. “Come here,” he mumbled. Mikasa did, slipping her arm into the sleeve so that the Letterman clung like a cloak to both of them.

Her hand found his hand; her nails were smooth and tickled his palm as their fingers coiled together.

She rested her head on his shoulder.

* * *

It wasn’t long before collective theories quickly began to form around lockers, at lunch tables, about Eren’s past—the new guy—the guy from Europe, the foreign exchange who wasn’t even fucking foreign—Armin’s weird friend who called wrong numbers and started babbling before he even knew who’d picked up the phone.

It was a rainy winter. There wasn’t much else to do in a place like Greys but talk.

One branch of the grapevine said Eren was a military brat. Others whispered he had a genius IQ. They also said he was a recovering alcoholic, thanks to European drinking age. Another vein of rumor said he carried a Swiss switchblade and already had a juvenile detention record, which probably stemmed from the sources claiming he’d been kicked out of all the schools he’d attended before Monroe High—although it could have also been thanks to his general stubborn and mildly lofty attitude, and the fact that he somehow ended up in the principal’s office for a heated argument with the most popular lacrosse forward before the end of his first Friday all because he was showing off at lunch to very interested girls how easily he could switch between German and French and Italian.

He’d been wearing a backwards cap with a tiny tuft of hair sticking out at the front, and an Adidas Les Bleus jersey for the national team that he pretentiously refused to call anything but _footballers_. Raging testosterone, jump of adrenaline, territorialism and Auruo’s drive to impress Petra and there it was, everyone crowding around the table chanting for action until Mr. Pixis had breezed right through and requested they relocate to his office.

Jean had watched, Armin tense beside him, ready to jump as Eren’s backup if needed. Jean had watched, and he’d started to wonder just how much of the rumors Eren had started himself. He didn’t really help his own cause. He made scenes, which was at once both the best and worst thing for a new kid. Surely he was aware that gossip could make or break his entire reputation; surely he understood gossip made him what other people wanted him to be. Therefore a guy didn’t want to draw attention to himself unless he knew what he was going to do with it. Suicidal bastard.

That was the irritating thing about gossip. It was never truly good and never truly bad, but always somewhere treacherous in between, and with a dull secondhand horror Jean realized that either Eren didn’t get the way things worked here, or he was _testing_ the way things worked here.

Well, Jean could tell him all about how things worked here. They’d stopped writing _QUEER_ on his things by June, but for the first half of summer he never got high-fives or bro-hugs. He got sexual gestures and jeers. He got threats. He got ultimatums and underhanded advances so he stopped going to summer parties. He got bitched out by ignorant wannabes. But it died out after a few weeks. Mostly. He stopped wearing polos and cords; he stopped smiling and waving at people. He started punching back. He took the reputation they offered him and ran with it. They muttered under their breath, they scoffed, they laughed behind his back. But now they were afraid of him, too. Yes. Yes, Jean knew how things worked here.

Didn’t they teach the story of Icarus flying too close to the sun over there in stuck-up private schools?

But it was like something in Eren’s personal compass was slightly askew or maybe jammed. He either honestly did not care, or really didn’t get it, or he was doing it to spite Jean’s warning before class that first day, but: here he came whirling through the halls of Monroe High all _genuine_ and shit where everyone instantly loved him or instantly loved to hate him. He was a full moon attracting satellites but he was unknown territory and colonists were warring over him. He’d seen the world beyond Greys. He was a little unhinged, or maybe just dense. He was nonconformist, probably because he had no idea what everyone here expected him to conform _to_. He’d lived in France for the last two years of his life. And he wasn’t fazed in the slightest.

Jean wasn’t envious of that. He was more appalled, and admiring from a distance. Envy was a feeling that required too much expectation of self.

“Hey… _Hey_ …” Eren whispered, from the crooked desk he’d chosen directly next to Jean’s in the back shadows of Mr. Fritz’s World History.

“ _What_?” Jean fired back, cutting a glance over without lifting his head. Not that Mr. Fritz would notice them; he was maybe the only one in his course, maybe the whole school, who actually paid _attention_ to the films he showed. Blah blah fall of Muscovite dynasty, rise of the Romanovs blah. How, again, had Jean ended up with Eren in his daily life when it was Armin’s stupid friend to begin with?

Eren’s brow was dimpled; he looked like a kid questioning a schema that he for the first time could develop no explanation for. The Les Bleus jersey was a Beckham one this week, underneath a borrowed Letterman. “Hey,” he repeated, “before gym yesterday, these guys Nile and Ian asked me if I was European. I said no, I was born here, and they said, ‘No, are you _European_?’ I said I don’t know. Do you think it’s because I _do_ sort of have an accent?”

Jean knew what they meant. It also made painful sense why Eren didn’t know what they meant. Cultural and regional differences in insults, or whatever. Of course Europeans didn’t ask each other if they were European. The insensitive insinuation was unique to America.

“They were asking if you’re a fag,” Jean muttered coarsely under his breath, steeling himself just in case someone had dropped _his_ name while trying to manipulate some juicy rumors out of the poor idiotic new kid. _Hey, Eren, I don’t know if you’ve heard about Jean, but… I mean, if you hang out with US instead, nobody will think you’re…_ “Because for whatever reason, we think Europeans are fags. Welcome back to America, pal.”

“Why do they want to know so bad? That’s my own business.”

“We have a recent obsession with invasion of privacy here. Like we can’t just go to the movies or read a book for entertainment anymore.”

“Stop saying ‘we.’ You’re not like them.”

Jean stopped fiddling with his pencil and looked to Eren, breath caught on his lower lip. He fidgeted, slouching a little lower in his seat. “You don’t know me,” he wanted to protest. “Thanks,” he wanted to say, because he was deeply, regrettably moved. He didn’t get a chance.

“You know what Peter the Great was doing at your age, boys?” Mr. Fritz finally tuned in, calling to them from across the room and initiating a sweep of nosy glances their way. He opened his mouth to continue his reproof, but—

“Well, he certainly wasn’t talking through class, because he was ascending to the throne as Tsar,” Eren replied politely, and half the class guffawed at his nerve and the other half volleyed back to Mr. Fritz. Mr. Fritz cleared his throat, turning back to the boxy television where images of St. Petersburg were flashing, encrusted in silver and ice.

“Yes, exactly,” Mr. Fritz mumbled.

Sasha poked her head in Jean’s bedroom Sunday night, saying, “I heard the new guy speaks seven different languages and is here under an alias hiding from the Russian government because he knows KGB secrets.”

Jean dropped the comic book he was reading. “The KGB collapsed in 1991. He would have been like…in _kindergarten_. And _here_. He’s from _here_ , you know.”

Sasha shrugged, holding up both hands. “Hey, I’m only the messenger! I heard it from Conny. Just saying.”

It was on a Thursday that Eren found the memorial for Marco Bodt.

It was near the school trophy case, downstairs, near the freshman wing and the lower locker room entrances. It was surrounded by a number of fliers and signs—reminders to use protection, to get tested, to go to the drama club’s improv workshops, to check out a dumb sophomore band named Pencil Shavings, to take metal shop.

The memorial, however, was a long tall display, handmade, but tastefully so, with an enlarged photograph of Marco Bodt in the center and a million different signatures and notes of sympathy swarming around it in different colors, like ants to a spilled sweet. Crayola markers hung on yarn, taped up to the brick wall, so the messages didn’t have to stop. Battered by the toes of too many careless shoes, a little cardboard UNICEF donation box sat next to a UNAIDS one in similar disrepair. Someone had recently taped a dried rose to the poster, and a newspaper clipping of a recent fundraiser for the Bodts and their medical bills.

 _Marco, we miss you!_ purple shorthand cried.

 _marco u were such an amazing person xoxo_ was in bubbly green.

 _Gone but never forgotten_ , said alternating blue and silver—the school’s colors.

The photo of Marco was a good one, thank God. Smiling, eyes little crescent moons of kissable lashes, a real smile, showing a little teeth, a smile that was almost a laugh, a laugh as calming and freeing as a bubbling brook, and his dark hair sticking up at the widow’s peak, and his head tipped a little to the side, and the colors had all been fucked up because of the shitty Office Depot enlargement but if Jean squinted, if he concentrated, if he married memory with reality, he could count the constellation of freckles on Marco’s pale face and trace the bruises under his eyes.

Jean swallowed hard. He had cottonmouth; he could taste metal rising on his teeth. It had to do with dull, lazy frustration with all the fake-ass condolences smothering the image, not pain, because the Prozac buried the pain in layers of reuptake inhibitors.

Eren pointed to the dates below the blown-up image of Marco. “‘June 1985 to February 2002,’” he read aloud, voice soft and thick out of reverence. He waited a moment, as if letting this fully sink in to him. Then he looked to Jean with a flutter of lashes, raising his brows in question even as they tried to knot in concern.

Jean cleared his throat, shrugging. “He died almost a year ago,” he explained hoarsely. “Greys took it really hard. It’s not something that really happens a lot… Kids dying, I mean. Young adults dying. _High school students_ dying. I mean, two years ago there was a drunk-driving accident, and when I was in middle school some kid had an aneurysm. But Marco… Marco was everyone’s friend. Marco did, like, community service all the time, and babysitting, and fundraisers, and stuff. He already had scholarships. He was perfect. He was everyone’s favorite Mensch.”

“But what happened?” Eren husked.

“He _died_ ,” Jean snorted, like it was the most insensitive thing Eren could have possibly asked.

“Obviously, asshole. But what _happened_?”

“Complications of double pneumonia.”

“Jesus. So not even something you see coming, like cancer.”

Jean shrugged again.

They stood in silence in front of the memorial, a simple, unassuming silence. Funeral silence. Down the hall near the main stairwell, the yearbook committee was putting the last touches on the school Christmas tree. They were wearing matching elf hats and it was grossly typical.

“You were close to him?” Eren wondered out loud.

Jean combed a hand through his hair. “He was my best friend.”

He chanced a glance Eren’s way, carefully. He didn’t want to meet Eren’s eyes directly because Eren, Jean had discovered very quickly, had the kind of blazing eyes that were like staring into the sun. They spotted your vision after.

Eren was just letting his gaze roam the memorial, like he was reading every last signature—even the ones that had been written over. He would, too. His head sagged back, his hands limp at his sides. The twist from his brow infected the rest of his face until it was the most poignant, painful expression Jean had seen yet on the crazy transfer kid. On maybe anyone, really. Jesus, who got that sad about someone they’d never even known?

Eren. Eren, that was who.

Jean turned away and headed to lunch, whether Eren followed or not. He was opening up to Eren even at arm’s distance. Eren was putting Rufus Wainwright songs in his head. It wasn’t good. He was afraid of it.

* * *

He saw Levi for the first time in the main hall on a Monday afternoon.

Okay, so it wasn’t literally the first time—he’d met Mikasa’s older brother in passing while he and Armin had been at Mikasa’s over the weekend, playing _Mario Kart_ —but it was the first time Levi saw _him_ , surely.

It was a brittle, soggy day. The sky was tumultuous. It matched the heavy gray of the water, lent an unearthly glow to all the deep greens of pines and other trees. Eren stood with his hands in his pockets, backpack sagging on his shoulders, watching out the main windows for Uncle Hannes and his old pickup truck. He had an appointment at Harborside and he wanted to get it over with. It was quiet; his ears rang. Most of the buses were gone, the parking lot almost empty. Teachers were laughing in the principal’s office. Uncle Hannes was fucking late.

From down the hall there drifted some overlapping voices like a very tense private conversation pushing the boundaries of public fight as the minutes ticked on. Voices, yes, sharp movements and shuffling footsteps. And then Levi Ackerman crossed through the main hall briskly, storming towards the doors.

Eren saw him in the reflection first, and then suddenly he was beside him. He was in mid-swing of his backpack to his shoulder. He was in an oversized sweater, black Dickies, black Docs. He looked irritable at the very least, violently raking dark hair out of his narrowed eyes. No doubt he was leaving someone in the dust and trying not to look obvious.

Nobody cared. Nobody was around to care but Eren, which was probably why Levi looked back.

He met his eyes directly, and a short stare-down ensued as Levi continued moving, holding Eren fixed in his gaze even over his shoulder as he heaved the doors open. It was like slow motion, like he instantly recognized him, like he was considering something about him, like he knew something about Eren others didn’t, like he remembered him, like he was seeing a bird of his same rebellious feather. Or maybe he was just waiting for Eren to look away first.

Eren was alone. He had no Armin or anyone else to fill in the information he lacked. Levi was head of the drama club, that much Eren knew because of Mikasa. People were scared of him, that much Eren had gathered elsewhere. But Levi was a senior. Seniors were scary simply by rank. Levi was all dark and mysterious, like the kind of guy who’d be found sitting with his legs crossed in a coffee shop sipping espresso out of a tiny cup, studying Musain revolution and reciting Shakespeare, Wilde, or Olds. Or listening to Nirvana, or The Smiths, smoking endless cigarettes. He looked like the kind of guy who deserved to say he’d lived in Europe a lot more than Eren did, purely because he probably really wanted to.

“You’re dating my sister, aren’t you?” Levi asked over his shoulder, eyes sharp, lip curled. It felt almost like a threat. He wasn’t looking for an answer. The cold outside air rushed in, purified by frost and rain. The door slammed shut.

Eren never did see who Levi was arguing with. He was out the doors and gone, hunched into a dark green muffler. And then there was Uncle Hannes, peeling into the circular drive.

“Is that Levi’s?” a girl named Isabel asked in English the next day.

Eren looked over his shoulder like he might actually be able to read the _ACKERMAN_ stitched across the back of the Letterman he wore. “What? No, it’s Mikasa’s.”

“You’re wearing your girlfriend’s Letterman?”

“I’m not dating her.”

“The PAC bathroom begs to differ.”

Jean and Armin showed Eren the PAC bathroom, where in the very farthest back doorless stall, the chipping paint was infested with messages in Sharpie. This was the breeding ground for the rumor mill. This was where all the juiciest tales got started. This was where truth went to die.

“See?” Armin pointed. “It says you were kicked out of Europe by Interpol because you killed someone.”

Eren shrugged and nodded, cocking a brow. “I mean, that’s twenty-eight percent true.”

“Twenty-eight?” Jean echoed, making a face.

“I was kicked out of school in Paris because I’m trouble, but my dad made me come back home. Interpol? Are you joking?” Eren weakly kicked his heel back against the leg of the stall, shoving his hands in the pockets of Mikasa’s Letterman jacket. “But I’m glad I got kicked out. I’m tired of that shit. I just want to be normal.”

“Eren, you can’t date the Breakfast Club girl and expect to be considered normal,” Jean sneered kindly.

Armin elbowed him. Eren laughed; it was a funny joke. Mikasa sort of _was_ like the Breakfast Club girl, all creepy and deep. Except she was also on the wrestling team and so that gave her more of an edge. Eren pointed at the writing on the wall, laughter fading quickly like a candle snuffed out in the night.

“‘Mikasa’s a badass,’” he read, following with his finger. “‘Ackerman’s a fucking bicycle.’ ‘Ackerman and the lacrosse captain if you know what I mean.’ What _does_ that mean?”

“They mean Levi,” Armin explained at about the same time Jean droned, “Everyone gets a _ride_.”

Eren shook his head, smiling wryly at such crudity. “Well, according to this stuff, I really am dating Mikasa, huh? Cool. Oh, and Armin is Annie’s bitch. And Jean likes it in the ass.”

* * *

Four days before winter recess, the sky was an opaque gray but there was still no snow on the ground. Mikasa was on the phone with her father, and Levi looked up at Eren boredly from his bed where he sprawled with his feet on the pillow and his chin on his arms, some CD of the Alanis persuasion on repeat and MTV’s _The Osbournes_ flashing across his little Samsung television.

“You fucker,” Levi said through his teeth, though quite empty of real threat, “you’re dating my sister to get to me, aren’t you?”

Eren’s nose wrinkled. “I never said that. I just asked why they called you a bicycle.”

He leaned in Levi’s bedroom doorway, returning the firm, fixed eye contact.

“I’m not dating your sister,” Eren said a different way. “Everyone just said we were.”

“Everyone likes to make things up,” Levi breathed, lazy, settling back down on one arm, like it was almost a yawn or something. His socks had the same design as pyramid-patterned ponchos. He looked like he hadn’t slept much in the last week.  

“Like you being a bicycle,” Eren suggested.

Levi flashed a look his way, brow lowering ominously. But a smile flickered across his mouth and he sat up on his elbows again, tipping his head. There was something sort of seductive about it and suddenly two and two clicked together into four in Eren’s head and— _Oh_.

“Yeah,” Levi snorted, like he saw the understanding as it occurred.

“I’m sorry, I just…” Eren shrugged, blushing hotly. “I read it in the PAC bathroom. Jean and Armin just showed me the PAC bathroom. I was just wondering—”

“If it’s true?” Levi finished for him, cocking a brow. “Some of it’s true. That’s the thing about rumors. Some of it is always true.”

Eren cocked the opposite brow, drumming his fingers near the doorjamb. “So everyone gets a ride,” he surmised, somewhere between a question and a recital.

Levi swung up to sit cross-legged. He sighed and motioned for Eren to come in and close the door. Eren obeyed, taking audience at the foot of Levi’s bed.

Levi counted off on the fingers of one hand. “In no particular order—Hanji, Nile, Mike, Farlan, Erwin.”

“What’s that?”

“The notches on my bedpost.”

“I don’t get it. You’re gay?”

“Since 1999, baby.” Levi shrugged like it was no big deal at all. Eren was relieved. He didn’t know how to handle it when people made big deals out of things that weren’t big deals at all. It was partly the reason he didn’t have very many friends. Levi was quiet, eyes moving critically over Eren. Eren stared back.

“Were you molested?”

Levi’s face soured like he’d bitten into something nasty. “You don’t…just ask someone that.”

Eren shrugged. “I was.”

Levi’s face dimpled into a new pinch of horror, which hadn’t seemed possible. “You don’t just tell someone that,” he rephrased. “I don’t care if it’s good to talk about it—”

Eren quickly tried to save face. “Oh, I talk about it. I have a therapist. Seriously, though. I’m okay about it, Levi. That’s just the first thing the shrinks tell you, you’re gay because you were molested. Or having a manic episode.”

“…Are you?” Levi prompted next, raising both brows very slowly. “I mean, I was joking about using my sister, but—are _you_ gay? We always seem to find each other. It’s like because of everyone else, we’ve evolved to develop this inner compass for bullshit. We can see right through it. We know where we’re safe.”

“Delanoë is doing fine since he got stabbed. PACS has been around since 1999. But maybe I just never felt _not safe_ because homosocial environments like an all-boys school don’t exactly breed the same homophobia as, say, the extremists in the streets.”

Levi squinted at him long and hard, the ghost of a tiny smile playing with his mouth like he was leery about surrendering to it. Like this chipper banter on such morbid subjects was too good to be true. Finally, he drew a short breath, and took the liberty of paraphrasing, “You’re gay, then.”

Eren shrugged. “I know it’s not entirely normal, but I can’t help how I am—”

Levi laughed harshly. “What’s not normal about it? Oh wait, don’t tell me. It means I’m less of a man. It means I’m an embarrassment to the national machismo. It means I’m weak, pathetic, disgusting, an abomination. Or a victim of sexual assault. Right? That’s new. God forbid we just _like cock_. Maybe God made us this way because He wanted us to be this way.”

“You believe in God?”

“Well, I believe there’s more than coincidence.”

Eren shrugged again. He wasn’t sure. Things were different here; that was all he knew. He could still remember in detail the assassination attempt on the mayor during _Nuit Blanche_ , how at the all-boys internats à l’année just outside Paris they’d sat around in the common rooms in their little uniforms trying not to look at each other as the assassin’s cries echoed from the news programs—“I hate politicians, the Socialist Party, and homosexuals!”—because just last week, Alain and Henri had been caught kissing in a broom closet, and Henri’s tutor always stared at Roland like Roland wanted to be stared at, and everyone knew Rémy slept in Jérôme’s bed every night, and that the Italian student Tonio had a crush on Eren and wanted to be his first.

 _Le Monde_ had published the words of the assassin’s neighbor: “We’re all homophobic here because it’s not natural.” So Eren and Tonio snuck into the courtyard one night with a Zippo lighter and set the paper ablaze. It almost burned Tonio’s hands so he’d thrown it down but too close, far too close, to the gardener’s leaf piles, and so the courtyard had quickly been aglow—

“ _Les cœurs saignent!_ ” Eren had hissed, tearing up and not quite sure why, voice thickening in his throat until he choked on the words. He just felt so hurt, so angry, so wronged. His voice had cracked and frayed. “What’s not natural? _What’s not natural!_ ”

Levi snapped his fingers to get Eren’s attention back, smirking faintly. “…You’re a little nuts,” he flirted. “You wanna kiss?”

Eren cleared his throat, running his fingers through his hair like it might shake away the cobweb of very recent memories. He hugged his knees to his chest, rocking back on his tailbone. “I heard you were dating the lacrosse captain,” he parried smoothly. It was flirting back.

Levi shrugged and shook his head at the same time, glancing to his closed door like he was worried Mikasa might know what they were doing. “We’re taking a break,” he muttered coldly.

“Oh, that’s who you were fighting with the other day. I’m sorry.”

“It’s whatever.”

“You know I was with your sister, right? On the bus. She didn’t tell you?”

“She did. Shut up. No more about that.” Levi held a hand out, gestured with two fingers for Eren to come closer. “You wanna kiss or what? You’re cute. I’m bored and lonely. And a bicycle, I suppose. You don’t need training wheels, do you?”

Eren blushed furiously. How forward and unromantic. But it was a comfort, too. Levi was right; birds of the same feather somehow or another always flocked together. His heart jumped to his throat. Levi was looking at him like he was the most adorable thing in the world and hey, Eren liked kissing.

“…Yeah,” he husked, rolling forward to his knees and crawling forth. “Show me how it’s done back here, Captain America.”

Levi snorted. “No. No, that’s my ex, darling,” and then his tongue was in Eren’s mouth and Eren shivered, gasped, lost his breath and then his footing, and melted into Levi’s bony fingers like ribbons of wax.

* * *

“I think we’re all glad you’re not mute and drawing pictures anymore, Eren,” Dr. Smith said with a smile that left creases at the corners of his eyes like cracks in plaster.

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Eren chirped. “And thank God, too, because I felt really unoriginal after seeing ‘The Sixth Sense.’”

Dr. Smith’s smile deepened, a silent laugh. “Your EEG came back fine. Your bloodwork looks good, actually. I think your prior psychiatrist finally found a good balance between the Depakote and Ativan. Are there any other side effects you’ve noticed that are bothering you at all recently?”

“Sometimes my coordination feels off. Sometimes I’m still dizzy.”

“Are you still journaling these things? You’re—what, almost seventeen? Your body’s still changing, and as it changes, your doses might need to change with it.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why all the bloodwork.”

“Essentially. Moving on from all that, do you want to talk about how you’re settling in?”

It was Eren’s turn for a dry, silent laugh, studying Dr. Smith from the corner of his eye. “You sound like my dad. ‘Settling in.’ He’s coming back for Christmas, by the way.”

“That’s good!”

“Yeah…”

“Why don’t we start with why you’re here?”

“It’s not in my records?”

“I’d like to hear it from you, if you’re willing to tell me.”

“Well, I caught the courtyard of my boarding school on fire. My dad was pissed and shipped me back here. This is my ‘last chance’ before he just hires a private tutor and I’m locked away into the hell of homeschooling. A guy needs to get out, you know? A guy’s gotta have friends and social interaction.”

“Any changes in mood lately, being back? Any…what did you call them, ‘titan moods?’”

“No. That’s why I’m on meds. I cried a little, watching home movies with my Uncle Hannes last weekend.”

“You seem distracted, Eren. Is there something on your mind?”

Eren heaved a sigh. “Yeah. Actually, yeah. I’m a raging homosexual, Doc, and I have to break up with my girlfriend after I get out of here because I made out with her brother.”

Dr. Smith didn’t have much to say to that right away. Psychiatrists were funny like that. They never wanted to say the wrong thing.

“It’s okay,” Eren reassured him. “Breakups are normal.”

* * *

**_end ch ii._ **


	3. Middle Distance Runner

**iii. {greys, california; december 2002}**

Greys felt like the front of a Christmas card and Jean was not complaining. For a while, this wasn’t the regular world. It was red velvet ribbons on lampposts and festive wreaths on front doors, snow turning to slush and then to sharp ice from the rain, a silky maritime fog snuggling up the pines. It was _Frosty the Snowman_ and nativity sets, and too many God damn tourists on Main Street buying roasted chestnuts and classically made candy canes.

Sasha was singing in the annual Christmas parade with the rest of the Monroe High chorus down in the Square, just off Main Street where the courthouse was, and the moldy DMV, the oldest bar in town and the Laundromat, with a vista of the shivering gray Pacific behind the Greys City Park Pavilion.

Jean ducked out as soon as the performance was over, because what sort of brother was he if he didn’t at least cheer and clap for his goofy grinning sister? He wandered with Armin and Annie and Eren and Mikasa afterwards, huddling deep into their coats and sharing funnel cake powdered red and green as Main Street shops beckoned with warm light and free hot cider.

“What are you doing tonight?”

“We open all our gifts but one at midnight, the last one first thing in the morning together. Ackerman family tradition.”

“That’s cool!”

“Kinda cool, I guess.”

“Sasha and my mom are making homemade sugar cookies, icing and all.”

“I’m going with my grandpa to help at the soup kitchen.”

“Midnight Mass with my dad.”

“Your dad’s in town, Eren?”

“He flew in yesterday. He leaves in two days. Yeah.”

“I want to see him before he goes!”

“God, it gets dark so early this time of year.”

“Let’s sneak into the lacrosse field and make snowmen.”

Bodt family Christmases had been warm and fun and hopeful.

Bodt family Christmases hadn’t depended on baby Jesus and they sure as hell hadn’t protested against secular reindeer with red noses or magical talking snowmen. Bodt family Christmases had included stringing popcorn for the tree and watching home movies, everyone on the L-shaped couch with the foot rests popped out, wrapped in knit throw blankets and finding the perfect mix of milk and water for Swiss Miss hot cocoa. One Christmas they’d even toasted marshmallows over the gas burners on the stove, and they hadn’t tasted the same but it had been hilarious and no one had ever questioned why Jean was always included because why wasn’t Jean included? Mr. and Mrs. Bodt had just made sure he got home to his own family on time and they’d always looked the other way when under the porch light Jean leaned forward with Marco’s fingers in his and—

The sky was a strange starless and peakless purple, stretching like the dome over a snow globe.

The lights and celebration faded the farther they trekked from Main Street; the Christmas parade was drawing to a close. The mayor would make his appearance and they’d do the elementary holiday pageant, complete with first-graders playing the bells. Then everyone who’d even given a toss to march around in the cold in the first place, dragging their kids in plastic sleds, pretending to socialize with neighbors they could have cared less about, telltale Greys galoshes stomping through slush and dirty snow, would quickly disperse. _Community_. Jean rolled his eyes at the farce. People only cared about themselves and the image they projected.

All right, so he was a little cynical sometimes. He was working on it.

He actually really did enjoy Christmas. He wanted to make a sugar cookie of the Grinch and split it with Sasha watching holiday flicks on the Hallmark Channel, cozied up in their pajamas in the rainbow lights of the Christmas tree. But he also didn’t mind sneaking into the lacrosse field to make snowmen, either, and that was progress.

There wasn’t much snow on the ground here; it was either icy muck or stiff grass. Ah, that was a Northern Californian winter. One day there was a kiss of white and the next, cool damp greens again.

“ _Heads up!_ ” Armin howled as a poor excuse for a snowball slammed Jean right between the shoulders.

“Oh, that’s how we’re playing, huh?” Jean growled back, but there was laughter. There was a small smile. There was a snowball being packed tight in his hands and Armin running away, cackling.

It was somewhere in the middle of pitiful snowball fights and even more pitiful snowman construction and shivering laughing together near the chilled bleachers that a car peeled by on the other side of the chain-link fence, blasting classic rock through the hearse of winter limbo.

It was somewhere between Eren jumping off the bleachers and singing along at the top of his lungs, “ _Carry on my wayward soooooon!_ ” and Armin almost tripping as he scrambled to join in, “ _There’ll be peace when you are dooooone!_ ” It was somewhere with their voices bouncing around in the crystalline dark even as the car and its muffled musical accompaniment rolled off and away into the night.

“So how do you know Armin?” Eren prodded, somewhere after Mikasa started teaching Annie wrestling moves with Armin cheering them on, huddled in the safety of the southern lacrosse goal.

Jean shrugged, not caring if Eren flopped down beside him on the grass in the center of the field, where the ground was cold but relatively dry, and clouds were shredding away from a few lonely stars like strips of gauze. Eren, Jean had accepted, was hell bent on being his friend whether Jean reciprocated or not. Making friends was apparently very easy for Eren. Jean, not so much.

“I met him in middle school,” Jean conceded. “We competed in the spelling bee together. He took first and I took second. I don’t know, we started eating lunch together and talking family drama and that’s pretty much how you become friends when you’re eleven, right?” He cast Eren a glance. “…You?”

Eren wasted not a breath. “Kindergarten. We’re blood brothers. We made the pact and everything.”

“What, the stupid cut your palms and shake on it pact?”

“It’s not stupid.” Eren frowned. It was almost a pout. “Plus, we just cut our fingers and put them together. We didn’t go all out. How do you know Mikasa?”

The way he talked was funny; there was no definable pattern to it, no predictable beats or pauses. It was like his thoughts all ran together, no single idea any more or less urgent than another. It was like he had no filter. Jean issued another awkward shrug, folding his arms behind his head, fingers buried in his hair to keep warm without gloves. “I was in a class with her freshman year. We did a group project. What about you? She’s your _girlfriend_ , right?”

“No,” Eren hummed, like, _Duh, Jean, we’ve been over this._ “I’m gay.”

Jean blinked up at the winter sky, feeling the air sharpen to a point between them. He wasn’t sure if Eren was waiting for him to look his way in shock or question, or if Eren really didn’t care at all. He should have. He _should have_ cared. Jean didn’t want to see him get away with it just because he didn’t care, that was poetic injustice.

“Wow,” Jean mumbled dispassionately, “you’re up front about it. That’s brave.”

Eren’s tune swiftly changed, however. “I met Mikasa in fourth grade,” he explained flatly, which was bizarre, and distant, and uncharacteristic of him—or of what Jean knew of him thus far, anyway. This prompted a glance, if anything, and a chill zipped down Jean’s spine at the way Eren’s eyes reflected the night sky like they were just as deep and boundless and full of unfair mysteries. “On the school bus,” he added, coughed into the back of his knuckles, and then just as suddenly and inexplicably as the clouds when the devil was beating his wife, his expression cleared up again.

“So…when exactly did you leave Greys?” Jean grunted, not so obtuse or impassive that he couldn’t tell when a topic needed to be changed. “It’s starting to get around now that you lived here before.”

“About time. I left in fourth grade.”

“Why, exactly?”

“My dad took a lecturing position at a Swiss university. But my mom had just died, so…we needed to leave for a while.”

Jean cleared his throat. “Oh. I’m…sorry.”

Eren looked at him funny. “Why? It was almost ten years ago.”

“I’m still sorry. Jesus.”

“Hey, so you told me before that you’re not interested in friends because you’re more worried about getting the fuck out of high school.”

“Um. Yeah. Haven’t changed my mind.”

“Well, what are you doing then? When you get the fuck out of high school?”

Jean scowled, lifting both elbows to flash Eren a frustrated glance between his shoulder and the dead grass. “I don’t know,” he droned. “Should I?”

“According to my dad you should.”

“What about you, then, huh, you country club motherfucker?”

Eren stared him down. Apparently that insult _did_ jump cultures successfully. But his death glare had humor crinkling at the edges like a paper slowly going up in flames; his brow twitched half to cocked and a smile perked at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know,” he purred, blatantly side-stepping the jab. “My dad will probably have a say in it, though.”

Jean picked at some grass absently, sprinkling it above his head. “I’ll probably go to San Francisco,” he mused. “Berkeley, or something.”

“Yeah, they have a nice gay scene there, I hear.”

Jean snorted. “What makes you think I’m gay?”

“You didn’t deny it.”

“That’s not the point.”

Eren rolled a pointed glance his way, smirking faintly. “I went to school in Europe. I can tell.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Yeah, there’s codes over there. Like, in Berlin if you do this gesture… And in London, if you tip your head and make this motion at the same time—but tip your head to the _left_ , specifically… And in Paris, if you blink three times in a row, you’re asking for a blowjob.”

Jean scrutinized him, mouth pursed.

“…It’s a joke,” Eren said finally. “I’m joking.”

“And yet you couldn’t figure out what the guys meant when they called you ‘European?’”

“That’s the joke.”

“I feel like maybe you’re a liar.”

Eren rolled up onto his arm suddenly, hanging over Jean’s face and blocking out the stars with the inner moonlight that pooled in his eyes. Jean did not appreciate it. “No,” Eren blurted, lips dropping sweet little clouds on the air between them. “One thing I am not is a _liar_.”

Jean cleared his throat, uncomfortable if only because he liked this. He hated himself for it. He rolled away and up to sit with his arms against his knees. “Well, you’re not saying everything,” he reworded. 

“Neither are you,” Eren parried.

“Our friendship isn’t on that level yet.”

“What level?”

“Honesty.”

“I’m always honest.”

Jean shot Eren a dirty look, jaw tightening. “Well, some of us aren’t that lucky.”

He didn’t intend to be mean; he felt guilt for the injured frown dimpling Eren’s face at that. He hissed a sigh through his teeth, throwing plucked grass at Eren. They were at an impasse and he could feel himself caving deep down underneath the Prozac. God, Eren was perfect. Jean hated him because he was perfect. He was fearless and—there it was again, that damn word—he was _genuine_ , he was a microburst, or the chaos at the center of the cosmos. He was all sorts of wrong but in ways that were irresistibly, perfectly _right_ and how could anyone at school presume they had a right to speak ill of him when they didn’t know him at all?

“…We’re still in the preliminary qualification round of friendship,” Jean mumbled, trying to fortify boundaries before he fucked anything up.

Eren cracked a grin like sunrise at midnight. “I’ll take it,” he hummed.

* * *

Jean threw back his head, curling the pill to the back of his tongue and washing it down with a swig of eggnog.

“Hey, Jo-Jo, go get your sister,” his mom singsonged from the pantry, Christmas flannel pajama pants dancing at her ankles as she stretched, trying to reach the baking ingredients shoved on the uppermost shelf. _Jo-Jo_. Jesus. How old was he now and she still called him _Jo-Jo_ on Christmas Eve. Jean cleared his throat, gently pounded the back of his fist to his chest to ease the pill down.

“’Kay,” he mumbled, shuffling out of the kitchen and upstairs to get Sasha. His shoes were still melting ice on the towel near the door; the lights from the Christmas tree had greeted him warm and glittering when he’d stomped back in from all the fun in the lacrosse field. It was Christmas cookie time now, the Muppet Christmas movie on the little kitchen TV. Kermit and Gonzo bellowed:

“ _I feel so invisible tonight, all the plastic Santas doing hula dances remind me that I don’t belong…_ ”

The stairs were a portal to déjà vu, in all honesty, or so Jean thought sometimes, if only very briefly, and unimportantly, and habitually, because for almost eighteen years he’d been watching his socked feet move up the same dark carpet, shadows slanting on the off-white walls. He could read childhood memories in the pocks and gouges on the handrail, faded stains from markers, chips in the plaster of the wall itself. Not to mention all the family photos that lined the hall on the second floor, between seashells and candles and Hobby Lobby crosses—there was Christmas 1989, summer at Disneyland, school picture days where Sasha still had braces and crimped hair and Jean’s hair was still all blond, he’d actually combed it, he looked cocky instead of tortured—vacation at the beach in San Fran, Thanksgiving, Sasha at Conny’s soccer games, Jean and Marco asleep on fold-out chairs around a large fire on that one camping trip in the redwoods—

“Everyone’s talking about it. He’s queer. He’s dating Levi Ackerman which means he’s also _promiscuous_.”

“Hey, you had that vocab word in English, too?”

“Yeah.”

“No shit, though?”

“I heard it from Hitch and Farlan—I mean, he _is_ friends with your brother, so…”

Jean trailed to a stop in Sasha’s bedroom doorway, staring dully at his sister and her boyfriend, who was currently hanging half in Sasha’s window for some secret Christmas kisses.

Conny saw him first, eyes widening and face going blank. Sasha spun around looking so damn guilty, guarding Conny in the window like Juliet caught rosy-lipped with her Romeo. Conny’s grimace immediately took on shades of mildly defensive remorse, but it was obvious he was far more trusting of Sasha’s brother than many of his other upperclassmen.

Ah, and there it was.

Jean had been wondering how much longer it would take before Eren’s reputation started to suffer signs of homosexuality by association (whether it was true or not). Sasha and Conny waited. But Jean didn’t snap like he might have months ago. He just stood there frowning dismally at his sister.

“Ready for cookies?” he asked when neither Conny nor his sister budged an inch or even a breath.

Finally Sasha shoved Conny back out her window, classic Clarissa and Sam save the trip to the hospital room for Conny. Jean heard him monkeying back down into the yard as Sasha slammed her window shut and bopped past her brother in her little rabbit-eared slippers. She didn’t even have to say, _Don’t tell Mom._ She didn’t even have to say, _I’m sorry._ “I’ll race you!” she squealed, and Jean could hear it in her voice she was afraid he hated her.

He didn’t hate her.

He was just irritated. He was thoroughly annoyed that Eren thought he could get away with pretending rumors and reputation did not exist. He was livid that weird zealous Eren was not _fazed_ by rumors and reputation and he was pretty peeved that he was _worried_ about Eren in the face of rumors and reputation. _Promiscuous_. Wasn’t it just _hilarious_ how Levi wasn’t the one they scorned, but the new guy? The new kid? _Queer_. Fresh meat. An empty canvas to paint all the colors they felt like.

Jean’s throat tightened and he glowered down at the army of sugar cookie men waiting on the table to be iced. It was going on eleven o’clock, but who slept on Christmas Eve, anyway? The holiday radio was on, TV specials stuffed full with good cheer and annual morality, the stockings were hung and his mom had even made hot chocolate, and it was raining again, beating at the windows like so many little fists begging for attention. Sasha sang along to Christmas tunes with their mom, mixing up the homemade icing.

“Jo-Jo, hand me that over there, would you…?”

“Here, Ma.”

“Hey, Tater Tot, don’t whip the icing too hard.”

“I got it, Mom! I do this every year, remember?”

“Sasha, what did you do to your neck?”

“ _Nothing_ , Momma—”

“It’s a hickey, Mom— _ow_.”

Sasha glowered at Jean over the bowl of homemade icing. Jean mouthed an apology, rubbing at his arm where she’d punched him. Their mother wasn’t fazed. Brothers were known to pick on sisters. “Hey, Mom, when is Dad off tonight?” Jean changed the subject honorably.

“Three.”

“ _The witching hour_ ,” Sasha crooned.

Jean turned the corner with the kitchen phone and slipped down the hall into the bathroom, closing the door on the long cord. He was confident his mother and sister would not follow, even obvious as it was, and with the television and radio on, they’d never hear him.

He punched in the phone number and waited, sitting with his legs thrown over the edge of the bathtub and the telephone cord stretched so taut it was no longer curly.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mr. Arlert—is Armin around?”

“I swear you kids never sleep. You wanna share some of that magic with me, huh?”

Polite laughter. The moment Jean heard Armin’s grandpa passing off the telephone, the fake smile went out like a light. Jean sighed, rubbing at his face.

“Speak.”

“Jesus, Armin.”

“Oh—hi, Jean. What’s up?”

“Tell me about Eren.”

There was a short quiet and Jean hated himself more and more for asking at all with every second that passed. But Armin was the Oracle at Delphi; Armin whispered with the gods. Rather, to put it a little less theatrically—Armin knew everything and never in a malicious way.

“What about him?” Armin finally asked, a little protectively. He must have gone off to find somewhere private to talk. The echo of family in the background had disappeared for the ringing fuzz of landline silence.

“I can’t figure him out,” Jean said thickly, but what he really meant to say was, _It’s fucking weird being friends with the guy who wrong-number called me a month ago and basically saved my life._

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like I’m missing something and no one’s filling me in on the inside joke.”

“He’s just…” Armin sighed. “He’s just _Eren_.”

“Well—and don’t take this the wrong way, but—I’m worried for your pal, Armin.”

“ _My_ pal?”

“Yeah. I’m still deliberating on if he’s my pal, too.”

Armin snorted, something like a laugh that made Jean smile a little out of simple reaction. “Okay, whatever. Why are you worried for him?”

“People are awful. That’s why.”

“Well, yeah. People are always awful. He knows that.”

It was somewhat anticlimactic how little drama infected Jean’s voice during the big reveal. “People are saying he’s dating Levi, that he’s ‘promiscuous’ and queer,” he said, flat and mellow. Punctuated with a little shrug. _What did I say?_ that shrug embellished. Not that Armin would see it. Though he probably knew Jean well enough to guess. _That_ part was weird, too. That Armin was one of Jean’s closest friends, and yet still this Eren kid, this other close friend of Armin’s, was a complete stranger.

Armin was very quiet. Jean could hear him picking at the antenna on the cordless; he’d witnessed the habit himself. He couldn’t tell if it was nerves or avoidance. Jean waited. It was avoidance. Cue the annoyed pucker to Armin’s face, the storm clouds in his eyes and the bitter twist of his mouth.

Finally, Armin conceded, “All right, I’ll tell you about him.”

“Thank you!”

“He’s from here.”

“Yeah, then he went _abroad_ and got all cultured and cosmopolitan. We all know. New drinking game: take a shot any time Eren mentions Europe.”

“Do you want me to tell you, or not?”

Jean pulled the phone cord tighter and knocked his head back against the shower wall a few times. “Sorry,” he grumbled.

“His dad pulled him from school after what happened, but homeschooling still wasn’t good enough, so he took another job and they moved.”

Jean’s brow knotted. “What? After _what_ happened? I’m so lost. His mom?”

Armin’s voice sharpened, words like hand grenade pins. Like the way he talked around Eren to keep the ticking time bomb of Jean’s reputation at bay. “Back in 1995, Jean. Remember? It was all over the news. We had intruder and kidnapper drills in school for weeks after.”

It clicked in Jean suddenly, violent and vibrant as a movie-grade flashback.

The noise of the news, blasting at full-volume; his mom, running around frantically calling all the other moms and Sasha whining how she couldn’t play outside because Momma wouldn’t let her; his dad, and other dads, getting in their trucks and peeling off to—“Where are you going, Daddy?”—“The police station. You stay the fuck inside, you two, you hear me?”—KRVU Channel 21 flashing images of two smiling children Jean may or may not have met at school before, they were apparently in Ms. Kemna’s class, he was in Ms. Lovejoy’s class, one of them was a girl with soft dark hair and a pink velvet dress and the other was a boy in a striped T-shirt and neon green baseball cap and _If anyone has seen them, the anonymous tip line is open, will be open all night_ and _This doesn’t happen in Greys, it just doesn’t!_

“Oh…” Jean shifted, back squeaking against the bottom of the tub where his shirt had ridden up a little. His fingers twisted nervously in the phone cord; the taste of bystander guilt was alkaline on the back of his tongue. “When that guy kidnapped some kids on a school bus, right?”

“Yeah, it was Eren and Mikasa. Remember?”

Jean remembered.

It sort of put lead in his stomach but he remembered.

_I met Mikasa in fourth grade._

“Damn,” he whispered. His mouth was dry; a current of dull, protective anger throbbed through his veins if only for a shy second or two because it wasn’t his story, he hadn’t been personally involved, but really, from the ethically aware human perspective almost eighteen years of life allowed, how could anybody do something so scary to a grade-schooler? _Child abduction_. It was shit you heard about on the news and morning talk shows and _Dateline NBC_ specials, not from a classmate. That made it far too fucking real. “I do remember. I knew it was Mikasa, but I—didn’t know it was _Eren_ —except now that you say it, I _do_ remember them finding them and—Jesus, it was him, huh?”

_On the school bus._

“His dad took him out of school immediately. The camera crews and news people were like fucking vultures for weeks. Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember I just wanted to go trick-or-treating but my mom wouldn’t let us and I was pissed.” Jean scrubbed a hand down his face, closing his eyes for a moment. “So that’s why they moved to Europe. To get away from all that.”

“His dad wanted him to have a normal life, not be the poster child for small town America child abduction. But you just don’t go back to normal after that.”

“No wonder he’s so fucking weird.”

“Well, I mean, he’s… Never mind.”

“No, what?”

“He’ll never be normal after what happened. I don’t remember what exactly his dad said it was, but—bipolar, I think? Yeah, bipolar and PTSD. He’s all fucked up now, is what I’m saying.” Armin got ominously close to the telephone, speaking low and threatening across the line. “ _Don’t tell him I told you any of this_.”

Jean shook his head. When he realized Armin couldn’t tell, he cleared his throat and croaked, “I won’t.”

“It’s not like he’s _crazy_ , you know? Just—I mean, can you imagine that happening to you?”

“Can’t go back to normal,” Jean echoed, trying to assign it somewhere safe.

“He tries. No, he _pretends_. He pretends well. But that’s the one thing you have to know about Eren, Jean. He’s worlds away sometimes.”

“Well, I can’t be his friend.”

“…What?”

“That’s just too fucking much. You know?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do know,” Armin hummed, far from sympathetic. “But that’s not why you don’t want to be his friend. You’re freaking out because you feel guilty for making new friends. You always think you’re going to forget him. You’re not, Jean. It’s okay to make new friends and maybe love someone again.”

 _Marco_.

Jean drummed his knuckles on the side of the bathtub. “Okay, this conversation took a turn I didn’t expect, so I’m gonna go—”

Someone out in the hall yanked on the phone cord. “ _Jean!_ ” It was Sasha. “Hey, come on, you antisocial jerk. Ice cookies with us!”

“I gotta go, Armin. This wasn’t about me, though. This was seriously a conversation about Eren and me being worried about him. Not as his friend but as a good Samaritan who knows how the kissing other guys thing goes at Monroe High better than a bipolar transfer student.”

“Dating Levi Ackerman is different from being in love with Marco Bodt.”

“That’s a really fucked up statement, you know?”

“I mean it,” Armin fumed, “ _do not tell him I told you_. His dad worked really hard to sweep it under the rug. Eren tells people on his own terms.”

“I cannot believe this is the friend whose dad bought you plane tickets to see him. What are you, his shrink in training? A babysitter? You can’t even buy a lottery ticket yet. It can’t be legal he told you all that stuff and expected you to help him take care of Eren. Isn’t that, like, breaching confidentiality laws?”

“ _Jean, come on, I’ll unplug the phone from the jack_ —”

“I’m not a shrink in training or a babysitter, more like…an anchor. He told me all that on his own, you know. He’s my best friend, Jean. That’s never going to change. And hey, he’s your friend now, too. He’s already decided it. You’re screwed, Jean. You wanna be his friend, too. You can’t just _not_ be Eren’s friend. He’s that kind of guy. If he wants to be your friend, you’re gonna be his friend.”

“That sounds really dangerous and moderately uncomfortable.”

“ _Hey, you ho-ho-ho, quit diddling your Santa’s Little Helper and ice the freaking cookie I made you!_ ”

“Sasha, I’m fucking _coming!_ ” Jean growled, covering the telephone receiver.

“ _Ewww!_ ” Sasha replied merrily.

“I gotta go,” Jean laughed with Armin. “I’ll talk to you later. Merry Christmas, blondie.”

“You, too. Wait, hey—you think he’s really dating Mikasa’s brother?”

“I don’t know. He _officially_ told me tonight he digs guys.”

“I—”

Dead air. Sasha had really unhooked the telephone jack.

Jean heaved an exasperated groan, throwing himself out of the bathtub. Sasha was cruising for a bruising, man. Or at least a brotherly headlock and tickle torture until she apologized, or their mother told them to cease and desist.

 _He’s worlds away sometimes_.

Jean swung the phone over his shoulder like a limp sweatshirt and paused at the sink to examine his reflection. He looked tired as fuck. He looked empty as fuck. He looked about as numb as he felt—most of the time—but right now he was a little stirred up inside where news bits about kidnapped children and rumors about promiscuous gays and diagnoses of mental instability were all swirling together like the perfect storm.

 _You always think you’re going to forget him_.

Yes, yes he did.

But he wasn’t quite as terrified of it now as he was yesterday, and that was something to note in the Daily Mood journal for Dr. Smith, wasn’t it?

* * *

**_end ch iii._ **


End file.
